Smart toys, smart tangibles, robots and other smart things for children

Embedding electronics and enabling digital responses to everyday objects is already a widespread reality. The term smart toys, tangibles and robots cover a range of play products that can present different levels of network, processing and reasoning capabilities. Such interfaces have also become capable of collecting and processing data in realtime. While quality aspects and intelligent features are more relevant than ever, many relying on data-driven methods and artificial intelligence (AI), this also raises important privacy issues and concerns. Additionally, the design of meaningful play and learning experiences that go beyond data collection remains a challenging task. This workshop aims to explore challenges and related opportunities to feed interaction design of smart toys, tangibles, robots and other smart things for children that may shape the lines for future work in the field. It aims at bringing together researchers, non-academicians and, practitioners from relevant disciplines to discuss potentials and limitations of using various smart technologies for children, to define required methodologies, and to envision alternative future scenarios that fully unleash the potential that the new generation of AI-powered smart tangibles and related devices may bring.